Living Red Hot

We are in Florida and only a few hours away from our evening destination near Miami. Tomorrow is Evan's first performance in West Palm Beach to kick off the tour. I asked him if he was excited or nervous and he said both. I will make sure he is distracted him from both of these emotions by going out on the town to enjoy a nice dinner a few drinks with a good friend of ours from college who lives in the area, Mr. Bobby.

Our Ford Escape bed - a layer of yoga mats,
followed by a layer of egg crate, then a layer
of fleece blanket, topped off with a comforter.

It feels like we have been on the road for a week already. Sunday we had a late start to our trip to Florida and at around midnight we were outside of Washington, D.C. and looking for a place to camp. We wanted to try out our bed in the back of the Ford. Our first choice was the welcome center in Maryland but it was completely filled up. Truckers had crowded the area and were spilling onto the exit ramp. We got back onto 95 south discouragingly and hoped there was another rest stop close by. Unfortunately, there was nothing which explained why all the truckers in the state of Maryland were stationed at the welcome center for the night.

We had driven on for another hour and my eyes just couldn't stay open any longer. I needed to find a place for us to rest at least for a few hours. An image popped into my head delivering me an answer to our dilemma. In the summers of my hometown there used to be a couple RV's that would rotate at the end of our Walmart parking lot. Could we sleep in a Walmart parking lot? We did a little research and discovered that Walmart encourages people to sleep in their parking lots but have a maximum of 3 days stay allowed!

So we found the nearest Walmart which happened to be in Arlington, VA and settled up for the night. We quickly discovered that it wasn't an operating Walmart, it was in the process of being built. Bright lights shown on the exterior, men in hard hats ran back and forth from trucks, and bus loads of workers came and went all night. In addition, we discovered the space in the Ford is a bit crowded for two people. We tested our boundaries and tried to find a comfortable position which was laborious. It was not a restful sleep.

I woke up at 5 AM from a half asleep haze and decided there was no use trying to get anymore rest there. I drove for about an hour and found a rest stop and pulled over. I crawled into the back of our car and finally fell into a deep sleep. An hour passed before Evan woke up. He got behind the wheel and I laid in bed for another hour before deciding to get up for the day.

We decided to stop in Savannah, GA for the night and to get a hotel. We needed a good nights rest before we continued on. Also, I had used some shelving from our apartment in Tarrytown to organize the trailer and the entire wall of shelves and everything that was on it fell to the ground during travel. The event split open most of the tupperware and scattering all it's insides all over the trailer. It was a huge mess that needed to be straightened out as it was exceedingly difficult to get items out of the heap when they were needed.

We arrived to our Quality Inn hotel around 6 PM and decided to organize the trailer in the morning, we needed warm food and cold beer. There was a Scottish Pub, Molly MacPherson, within walking distance from our room so we headed out for a relaxing night. Unfortunately, we both had a little too much to drink and with stress levels high we got into our first 'debate' of the trip.

I call it a debate because Evan and I rarely fight, we argue our point of views on various forms of minutiae. It all started when Evan wrote a lengthly email for work at the dinner table which annoyed me, family time and relaxation should not include work of any form. I tried to distract him by discussing the nature of emails and how without the human voice to give words a tone, messages can get misinterpreted. It became an elevated discussion in our buzzed state of mind and ended when I went to bed red hot filled with frustration and disappointment in missing out on what was suppose to be a nice night.

To be honest I didn't think we would get into one of our debates this early on the trip but traveling from New York to the tip of Florida is the longest trip we will have to make this summer. On the positive side, as long as we survive the next few hours we can rest assure that we can take on any of the other drives between shows as they will all be shorter. Also, once Evan plays his first show and the mystery of new beginnings fades there will be less to stress over. The not knowing, I am sure is weighting heavy on both of us. Fingers crossed we will have a better night tonight!